What does radiomics do in PD‐L1 blockade therapy of NSCLC patients?

Abstract

With the in-depth understanding of programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), PD-L1 has become a vital immunotherapy target and a significant biomarker. The clinical utility of detecting PD-L1 by immunohistochemistry or next-generation sequencing has been written into guidelines. However, the application of these methods is limited in some circumstances where the biopsy size is small or not accessible, or a dynamic monitor is needed. Radiomics can noninvasively, in real-time, and quantitatively analyze medical images to reflect deeper information about diseases. Since radiomics was proposed in 2012, it has been widely used in disease diagnosis and differential diagnosis, tumor staging and grading, gene and protein phenotype prediction, treatment plan decision-making, efficacy evaluation, and prognosis prediction. To explore the feasibility of the clinical application of radiomics in predicting PD-L1 expression, immunotherapy response, and long-term prognosis, we comprehensively reviewed and summarized recently published works in NSCLC. In conclusion, radiomics is expected to be a companion to the whole immunotherapy process.

Clinicopathological characteristics correlated with programmed cell death-ligand 1 expression in advanced lung adenocarcinoma

“…Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally ( 1 , 2 ). Among them, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common histological type, accounting for more than 85% of the total number of patients ( 3 , 4 ), among which adenocarcinoma (ADC) accounts for nearly 60% of all NSCLC, making it the most common subtype of NSCLC. The vast majority of lung cancer patients are already in a locally advanced stage or with concurrent metastatic lesions at the time of diagnosis ( 5 ), thus losing the best opportunity for surgical resection.…”